


"She Deserves Better": a critique of Arrow's women heroes, villains, and everyone in between

by orphan_account



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Meta, Women Characters, on writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-05 16:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 9,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13392030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: One last rant while I orphan all my fics.As far as I'm concerned, Arrow ended when Samantha was gratuitously killed in 6.01, when the "reversal" in 6.04 was shallow and denied Felicity any vision of her goals or dreams, and when the Nazi crossover happened. I haven't watched Arrow after the Nazi crossover; all analysis ends there.





	1. Why "Deserved" Squicks Me

One last Arrowverse meta before I run screaming for the hills.

When I first starting watching Arrow on Netflix, one of my first thoughts was: they can't write women. (Actually, I speculated that the show had been created by gay men, because there were lots of opportunities to ogle male torsos, but the female characters seemed like cardboard cut-outs). Now that I know that one of the creators of the show was sexually harassing the women who worked on it, I am re-visiting my thoughts on all of the female characters - the ones I liked, the ones I didn't like, and the ones I didn't think too much about. I want to talk about different things than the complaints that I've heard about from other fans. Not just about women being killed, or put in comas, or denied screen time, or not given a voice. I want to talk about storylines that started but were truncated, about the times when women were given a voice and it was not believable, about the lack of clear motivations (or at least, motivations other than boyfriends or children).

But before I start, I want to critique the way a couple terms are used by the Arrowverse fandom. (Maybe in all TV fandoms right now.) I want to talk about the problem with saying that a character "deserves" something, and I want to talk about the concept of character development (versus character growth).

**"She deserves better."**

Thea deserves a happy ending. Felicity deserves a husband who doesn't lie to her. Laurel (or Sara, or Moira, or Shado, or Amanda Waller...) deserved better than to be killed.

I hear that over and over again in fan writings. And it really bothers me. Because you know what the reverse is?

"She deserved it."

She wore the wrong clothes. She wanted money. She wanted to go on a date with a famous guy. She wanted power.

She walked outside alone at night, or had too much to drink.

She had loose morals.

She had sex before.

These are the kinds of things that are said about women. Women who are raped. Women who are sexually harassed. Or just women who dare to want anything - who run for office, for instance.

When I hear women say "she deserves better," I hear an underlying belief that (white) women need to be perfect. Or else.

(Side note: men of color get this same treatment, especially in the media and the criminal justice system. And women of color get treatment that is orders of magnitude worse - assumptions that they are not as pure as white women and don't deserve anything good, _and_ that they are criminal and deserve punishment.)

That belief - that characters that are good deserve a particular outcome - gets tied into shipping wars. Felicity deserves Oliver because she is more pure, more good. (Or, from the other side, Felicity doesn't deserve Oliver because she re-directed a missile at Havenrock and killed a lot of people.)

That's why I don't want to be part of shipper culture right now. Because it doesn't feel like a celebration of love. It feels like an extension of the rape culture that expects perfection of women, and blames any woman with human flaws for whatever harassment, abuse, assault, job loss, or everyday sexism that she experiences. It feels like an extension of the abuse that the women creators are experiencing (in the Arrowverse, and elsewhere in Hollywood and the media and the world).

I do think that the women characters of the Arrowverse deserve better - that all women deserve better. Whether they are good or bad or in between, they deserve to be written, treated, and acknowledged as human beings. Not as objects for the male gaze to appreciate, or bodies to have sex with, or nurturers (of men, always of men), or someone to make sandwiches*. Human beings with their own dreams and desires and strengths and flaws.

In fiction and on TV and in movies, women deserve character development.

Which brings me to my next critique.

**Character Development.**

I see this term used in fandom to mean "character growth," or evolution, or progression. Changing into a better person. But that's not how I use the term.

To me, "character development" implies creating a believable fictional person. Writing actions that are consistent with the character's other behavior. Having a motivation (good or bad) that makes sense in the context of the character's beliefs and experiences. Using details - the way a character speaks, or dresses, or moves - to flesh out the person behind the face and the name. In writing, if I use a tight point-of-view, it even means writing descriptions that are consistent with the way that the character sees and experiences the world.

It's possible to have a character grow in a way that's not convincing - that doesn't fit with the character's experiences and motivation, or that uses details that are at odds with a character's moral growth.

It's also possible to develop a convincing villain, or a morally ambiguous character, or character that tries to become better but ultimately fails.

It's ok to want to see your protagonists grow into better people. But I think it's worthwhile to have different terms to complain when they don't than you use to complain about inconsistent (or just plain missing) motivations.

* I don't mean to imply that attractiveness, or sex, or nurturing, or sandwiches are bad things.


	2. Villainesses: What Makes a Girl Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know who really deserves better? All the female villains.

Want to know what the creators think about women? Look at the villains - the women who are bad.

And there's one thing that the women villians - at least the white women - have in common.

They're aggressively, dangerously sexual. They pursue men.

It's hardly original. As tropes go, it's an old, pervasive one. And Arrow's female villains just ooze it.

Black Siren, in 6.04, seducing her victims before she kills them. Evelyn pretending to be a teen prostitute to catch a bad guy, just before she meets Prometheus and betrays Oliver. The Huntress, in that strip club where she kills one of her father's men in... 1.17?

But the worst examples, to me, are Carrie Cutter and Isabel Rochev. Because they are in situations that are otherwise similar to workplace sexual harassment, but turned around in a way that blames the women - the exact way that women are blamed when harassment or assault is revealed.

Cupid's one big piece of continuity (besides the heart-tipped arrows) is the way she interacts with men, whether making kissy faces at the convicts on the bus in season 5 or trying to pick up Deadshot in season 3. And the backstory is that she was on the police force, until she got obsessed with "a colleague."

Crazy, love-obsessed woman.

But isn't that what men claim when women complain about being harassed? That it was all in her head, that she was the one with the obsession? It doesn't ring true - Cupid feels like a man's interpretation of what a crazy woman is like.

And then there's Isabel. Deceitful, manipulative Isabel. Takes over Oliver's family's company. Seduces Oliver in Russia. Tried to steal Robert Queen from Moira when Isabel was an intern and Thea was a baby. The young, attractive woman who goes after the rich, powerful man. Homewrecker. Bitch.

Wait. An intern? Robert Queen had an "affair" with an intern?

In the real world, when I see this stuff, it's the boss who pressures the young woman to sleep with him, who demands something in return for any scrap of mentoring or professional support. The #MeToo movement demonstrates how impossible it has been for women in Hollywood to succeed without dealing with these creeps. And Hollywood is hardly the only workplace where the only route to success - or even survival - goes through creepy men who expect sex (in the broadest sense).

And just before Isabel jumps Oliver, she talks about how hard it is for a woman in her career.

That tells me everything that I need to know about the Arrow creators' views of women. Ambitious women are evil, and use sex to get ahead.

What the perfect cover for a man who wants to sexually harass his female underlings.

It's the story that they want us to believe when women accuse them. They want us on juries, asking what she got out of the situation, what did she want. She's probably lying, trying to destroy an innocent man.

Robert Queen is portrayed as an imperfect man... but Isabel Rochev is the villain.

Isabel deserved better. Carrie deserved better. Black Siren and Evelyn deserve to be dangerous or evil or flawed in individually threatening ways, not always as the seductress.

(I realize that, in many cases, the show is building on the characters in the DC comics. But DC comics is hardly an innocent source - see Eddie Bergaza's influence. And the show can pick and choose what aspects of its villains to use. It chooses to emphasize the dangerous sexuality of its villainesses. This many time is not a mistake - it is a way that women are viewed.)


	3. Thea Queen and the Mystery of the Disappearing Storyline

I could talk about all the ways that Thea has been physically hurt to advance the story. She was in a car wreck in season 1, killed in season 3, put in a coma in season 5. I could talk about her boyfriends: Chase the DJ in the League of Assassins, Alex the brainwashed campaign director. Even Roy was messed up (and violent) after being injected with Mirakuru. I could talk about being drugged by her father and forced to kill Sara.

But I want to talk about a different issue. Once upon a time, Thea had a potential storyline. And it was dropped.

After being drugged, killing Sara, being killed and revived in the Lazarus pit, and having Roy leave... Thea had a potential story in season 4. She had a mask (even if it was a hand-me-down from Roy, rather than something that she had been inspired to take up based on her own experiences). And better than the mask, she had some complicated internal stuff. The Lazarus Pit made her want to kill. And her identity as Speedy was tied in with thrill-seeking, maybe due to the Lazarus Pit, but maybe also part of the same person who had taken drugs and shoplifted and wrecked a car and dated the guy who stole her purse back in season 1.

Thea could have had a great story. She could have wrestled with her blood lust, and with whether it was a curse or a blessing (especially given that it made her the only person on Team Arrow who was immune to Damien Darhk). She could have had an ongoing disagreement with Oliver about whether her thrill-seeking was an asset or a danger. She could even have been tragically responsible for the death of her friend Laurel, and could have followed that tragedy by dealing with her desire to kill and by leaving her identity as Speedy behind. And then she could have gone on to struggle with her identity as Moira and Malcolm's daughter and whether biology and history were destiny.

It could have been a great story about a young woman struggling with her identity. And it could have incorporated the same major plot points as in season 4 (and then into season 5).

But the story was dropped. Or rather, it was solved with a MacGuffin cure thing after making Thea nearly die (again). And Thea left the team without any obvious reason at the end of season 4, and didn't have a real story ever again. (A coma. Really? A coma?)

Thea deserved a story. Preferably, a story that doesn't involve having her mind controlled by someone, getting involved with another evil boyfriend, or being nearly dead.

Or at least if they're going to hurt her, they could write a story in which she gets to react to the things that are done to her, and grow, and change.

If they had time to spend two episodes on Slade Wilson's flashbacks, they could have made time to tell a story about Thea. They didn't.


	4. On Motivation and Characterization of Series Regular Women

I don't think that the creators of Arrow understand that women have reasons for the things that they want, and the things that they do. Or if they realize it, they don't bother writing their women regulars in a way that builds them as consistently believable humans.

One might argue that the women are all supporting characters. That Oliver is the main character, and everyone else is written to flesh out his journey. I have argued such things in the past.

I was wrong.

You can tell what drives Quentin Lance. He believes in justice, and in right and wrong. And he loves his daughters. And those characteristics carry through from season 1, when he was an antagonist to Oliver and to The Hood, through to season 5 and beyond, where he is an ally to Team Arrow. You can even track the moment when he changed his attitude about Oliver: the end of season 3, when he knew that Oliver was the Arrow, and Felicity asked him to help save the city (and Oliver) regardless of his personal feelings, and the beginning of season 4, when Oliver confronted Quentin about working with Darhk.

Diggle has a consistent motivation, too: he tries to do good, and he's a soldier at heart. Roy was a clueless, mouthy street kid with a heart of gold. Rene is rebellious but caring. Curtis is a brilliant ditz who believes in love.

But the women?

Thea supposedly has the "purest heart" of the Queen family. But every season, she changes in ways that serve the plot, but don't have any justification in Thea's experiences. In season 1 she is a rich brat with attitude, taking drugs and wrecking cars and shoplifting, until she meets Roy. But Roy doesn't explain Thea's moralizing in season 2: refusing to see her mother because she sees Moira as a murderer, and ranting constantly about people who lie to her. And how does the moralizing young woman of season 2 decide to go off with her mass-murdering father and be trained as a killer in season 3? And then accept Oliver's secret without complaints? And then encourage Oliver to keep his son a secret from Felicity in season 4? Why does she decide to leave the team at the end of season 4? And then why does she want to stay in the fantasy world with her parents in the season 5 crossover, but then fret that she's evil because she takes after her mother? And then why does she go back to being the moral one in 5.21, when faced with Robert Queen's history of unethical behavior in the death of the guy in the concrete factory?

People change. But they change for reasons. The male characters - even characters like Quentin, who aren't in every episode - have reasons for changing their behavior. Thea does not.

Felicity, meanwhile, spent a lot of time not wanting to talk. Not wanting to explain about her father. Not wanting to talk about Oliver's fears about loving her and being the Arrow at the same time in 3.01. Not wanting to talk about Oliver's lying and decision about William when she walked away from their engagement in season 4. Not wanting to talk about gun violence in season 5.

And fans complain about Felicity not having a voice. But... it's not really better when the writers have her say what she thinks.

My take on Felicity may be influenced by all the time I've spent trying to get into her head. She's my favorite character, and I enjoy trying to write from her perspective. But...

A lot of the time, Felicity's role has been to push Oliver in whatever direction the writers wanted him to go. But what does Felicity really think about killing? Is it her attitude in season 2, when she worried that Oliver killed again for her and encouraged Oliver to deal with Slade without killing him? Or is it her attitude in season 4, when she tells Oliver to kill Damien Darhk? How does Felicity feel about Oliver's experiences on the island - that they made him something like a hero, or that he was destined to always revert to being the man who worked alone? Does she accept that Oliver keeps secrets from the island, or resent his lies? Why does she want to be part of the team - because she wants to support Oliver? Or whatever her reason was for secretly working with the team at the beginning of season 4? Did Felicity avoid marrying Oliver because of the lies, or because he didn't trust her, or because she didn't want to interfere with his relationship with William, or because she thought marriage was bad luck because she ended up paralyzed after getting engaged the first time? What happened to marriage being about getting through the bad times because they were together?

What does Felicity want from her company? Just a job? Why can't she remember her dream of marketing her chip? Did she enjoy being the boss? Why didn't she try to start a company in season 5, then? If not, did she just take over the company because Ray wanted her to?

Why did Felicity need her mother, and Ray Palmer, and Ra's al Ghul to tell her that she was in love with Oliver?

If the writers are going to give me inconsistent and contradictory motivations from Felicity, I think I would rather have her stay silent, so I can make up consistent motivations of my own.

I've got more problems with the motivations of the women characters.

Why does Nyssa keep bringing up her forced marriage to Oliver? If the wedding was really a sign of just how horrible the League of Assassins was, she would be trying to forget it. Seriously. Make up some other reason for Nyssa to appear on the show. But not that.

Oh, and Laurel. I'm not a Laurel fan. But the writing for her was just as confusing and inconsistent. She's supposed to be driven by "always trying to save the world." But even in season 1, when that could have been a reason for her to find The Hood appealing, her motivations careened from one extreme to the other. And then in season 2, she was motivated by grief over Tommy's death, except for that flashback to the summer of 1.5 that was shown in season 4. (Well, was it grief, or self-pity, or guilt?) A Laurel who wanted to save the world might have thrown herself into her work, or tried to re-build CNRI, or something other than suddenly trying to get Oliver arrested. And in season 3, Laurel seemed motivated as much by vengeance as anything else. (I never saw anything beyond resentment and jealousy in her relationship with Sara, until Sara was dead.)

"Always trying to save the world." Except that when the scripts were written, they didn't try to show Laurel thinking beyond her immediate relationships.

Or how about Moira, having Oliver kidnapped in the pilot, but then we learn that she was motivated by her love for her children? Or her sudden willingness to run for mayor at the end of season 2?

What's behind Lyla's changing willingness to trust Oliver, or Felicity?

Why does Talia give a damn about her father's death?

Are there any women on Arrow who have motivations that make any sense at all?

Do the writers realize that women actually have reasons for the things they want and the things they do? Because it doesn't seem like it.

 


	5. Women's Crucibles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I haven't watched Arrow since the Nazi crossover, so when I talk about Dinah, you probably know more than I do. As far as I'm concerned, the show is over.

I liked Dinah's origin story when I first saw it. The scream during the particle accelerator explosion - it worked, and it meant that there didn't need to be a long arc resulting in a not-very-believable Black Canary.

When Vigilante turned out to be Dinah's supposedly dead partner/boyfriend, I yawned, but it didn't bother me. At the very least, it gave Dinah a love interest other than Diggle or Oliver. (I really didn't need any more love triangles involving Oliver, and I like Diggle and Lyla together.)

But I've thought more about it since then. Because I've seen that movie before. It seems like every single woman hero (or vigilante) on Arrow has an origin story involving a supposedly dead boyfriend.

Take Felicity, for example. I know she doesn't have a mask. But I also consider her a full-fledged hero. And the first episode devoted to her was "The Secret Origins of Felicity Smoak," so I think I can read that as her origin story. We get to see flashbacks to Felicity's college days, when her boyfriend Cooper apparently killed himself after being arrested for hacking that he was doing with Felicity. Felicity blamed herself, and it was a turning point to the Felicity that we know. But in the present day, Cooper turned out to be alive. And also a villain. (Just like Dinah's partner.)

To complete the parallel, in the flashbacks at the end of the episode, Felicity shows up in her classic glasses and blonde ponytail, dressed like she was when we met her in 1.03. It's like a superhero putting on a mask for the first time. Except in Felicity's case, her mask is her glasses, and her disguise is her hair dye and her clothes.

But it's not just Felicity. Thea becomes Speedy after Roy (supposedly) dies, then turns out to be alive. Helena Bertinelli was inspired by the death of her fiance. (He hasn't shown up alive, but Helena isn't a hero, either.)

It doesn't quite hold true for everyone, I guess. It was Tatsu's son, not her husband, who died. (But then again, being a mother seems to be the only other role for heroic women characters. And her husband left and joined the League of Assassins, which is kind of like killing his old self.) We don't know when Sara started wearing black leather. And it was Sara's death that led Laurel to put on the leather herself.

On the other hand, Laurel's journey did start with a dead boyfriend. Oliver. And he also turned out to be alive.

Women characters deserve a diverse range of origins and stories. They can have boyfriends (or girlfriends). They can have children. But they can be inspired by other things, too.

(The men also have tragic backstories, but they're more diverse, and the men have more blame and guilt in the tragedies, too. Women characters deserve stories that are just as diverse and rich and the male characters have.)


	6. Laurel: It's Hard to Be a Good Girl When a Man's Done You Wrong

Before I start: I said in my first rant that I dislike the way that shippers use in-universe arguments for why one couple deserves to be together - especially when the entire universe is a mess. This discussion shouldn't be taken as an argument for Olicity, or Lauriver. This is an argument that the Arrowverse has a problem writing healthy relationships, period.

So: the love interests.

I don't know when the creators decided to make Felicity be Oliver's ultimate love interest. I assume it happened sometime between 1.03 (when EBR was hired for one episode) and 2.23 (when Oliver told Felicity that he loved her, even if it was to fool Slade). My best guess is that the creators had a plan for season 2 by the time they finished season 1, so they probably made their decision somewhere around the time that Felicity joined the team, or they offered EBR a longterm contract.

I'm working under the assumption that Laurel was the intended love interest at the beginning of season 1, and that Felicity was the planned love interest through season 2 (but the writers wanted to set up the relationship while fooling the audience), and that the writers were keeping their options open during season 1B.

I think the writers made a good decision by making Felicity the love interest. But I think that both relationships were written in problematic ways.

So: Laurel.

I've heard the argument that Laurel/Oliver was doomed from the start, because Oliver cheated on Laurel by running off on the boat with her sister. That's not the part that I want to argue about. (Well, except for one thought: theoretically, I think there could be an interesting story about two problematic people who both go through trauma separately and end up together, despite bad behavior earlier. But that feels more like Sara/Oliver, or Helena/Oliver, than it fits Laurel. Or it could work in Olicity AU, too - but not with canonical Olicity, because the writers won't let Felicity be a complicated human being.)

I think the fatal flaw in the Laurel/Oliver relationship comes from a different source. The creators wanted a story about a damaged (even bad) man becoming a hero because of the love of an idealistic woman. But they couldn't manage to make Laurel be both the Good Girl and the hurt ex-girlfriend who had lost her sister.

They tried. Kind of. There was that time at the beginning of season 1 where it seemed like Laurel found The Hood appealing, even while she was angry with Oliver. (For one episode. And then not. And then for another episode later. And so forth.) But they didn't ever develop Laurel's reason for being attracted to the Hood. Did he appeal to her sense of justice, of righting the wrongs of the world? (That's the motivation that they developed for Diggle to work with Oliver, and it worked well enough.) Did Laurel just have a kink for tight green leather? (No. That sounds more like Helena.)

I don't know. I used to think that the problem was with KC's acting - that she didn't have a clear sense of who Laurel was, or didn't play her as a consistent person. But I'm a lot more sympathetic to KC now that I know about Andrew Kreisberg's harassment. KC was (and is) vulnerable, as a TV actress moving from her late 20s to early 30s. It's possible that she was trying her hardest to do what the writers and producers envisioned (because if the show had tanked, her opportunities for her entire career might have disappeared). Maybe she just approached every scene as intensely as possible.

In any case, it felt like the character had no consistency.

So I think that the problem with Lauriver was that they wanted Laurel to behave like a Good Girl and an inspiration, but she had no good reason to behave that way.

So Laurel deserved better. She deserved to be allowed to be angry.

(Note: she did finally get a chance to be angry - or at least self-pitying - in season 2. But again, the writers thought that Oliver needed a Perfect Girlfriend, and the whole alcoholism story was written to make Laurel less appealing. She should have had that chance from the beginning. And her rage should have been viewed as right and just and deserved.)

 

 


	7. Felicity: Good Girls Say No (at First)

So that brings me to Felicity's relationship with Oliver.

There's an ingrained cultural belief about how Good Girls should behave in relationships. Girls are supposed to say "no," and then boys are supposed to pursue them and get what they want, anyway. (Girls who don't say "no," at least at first, were called sluts, back when I was growing up.) We've been chipping away at this attitude for a very long time. From recognizing rape as violence (rather than stealing a formerly marriageable girl's virginity), to "no means no," to affirmative consent, we've come a long way during my lifetime.

But those cultural beliefs stick around. And the portrayal of relationships on TV, and in movies, and in stories keeps them alive.

So. Felicity. Have you ever noticed that she says "no" a lot? Not really as a characterization, but as a way to create narrative tension in the relationship between her and Oliver.

That dynamic started long before the relationship did, back in 1.15 (Dodger), when Felicity first joined the team. Felicity locked the door of the lair, Oliver unlocked it, there was a very sexy face-off, and Felicity told Oliver that she had made a mistake in signing on with him, even provisionally. And she walked out. And then Oliver and Diggle went to ask her to come back. (Not coincidentally, this is the episode where they dress Felicity in a teeny gold dress, have Oliver recognize that she's attractive, and lock a bomb collar around her neck. This is the episode where I think they were at least testing the possibility of Felicity-as-love-interest, if they hadn't already made the decision.)

In 2.02, Felicity says NO to becoming Oliver's secretary. But she acquiesces and becomes his executive assistant anyway. For the entire season. While the show develops their dynamic to make a relationship believeable. I know it's a reminder of the old screwball comedies. It's also a reminder of the pre-1980s acceptance of workplace sexual harassment as normal (and maybe a way to get a spouse).

(As an aside, once I started thinking about the workplace sexual harassment implications of Ray Palmer and Felicity in season 3, I realized that a lot of the same elements existed in the Oliver/Felicity boss/secretary relationship of season 2. Oliver was a little less coercive, and Ray just always felt more icky and creepy to me. But now that I've seen the parallels, I don't want to see anything that reminds me of the season 2 Olicity relationship. Not gifs. Not fics. Not videos. Nothing.)

In 3.01. After the date. In the hospital. Before the kiss and "don't ask me to say that I don't love you." Felicity tells Oliver "I don't want to talk." (He talks, anyway.) What really bothers me here is that it's OLIVER who is pulling back from the relationship in the will-they-or-won't-they game. But even when Oliver is the barrier to the relationship, the scene still starts with FELICITY saying no.

"I don't want to be a woman that you love," after Oliver returned from being apparently dead in season 3. Again, setting up the tension for the middle third of the season.

In 4.06, in many different scenes. It was bad that Oliver invited Felicity's mother without telling her. But worse, to me, was setting up Felicity's inner conflict about not wanting to lose herself in a man. They have never followed through with that statement as an aspect of her character. Instead, it was used to create tension and concern that the relationship might end. And it was resolved with the incredibly cheesy "we found ourselves in each other." It was a lovely kiss, but it didn't address the underlying issue.

In the second half of season 4. Felicity walking out without wanting to talk about it in 4.15. Felicity's response to Oliver's fake wedding plan in 4.16, but then giving a speech to Cupid about love. The conversation at the end of 4.16, ending with Felicity giving back the ring and leaving the team (only to re-join it soon afterwards).

In 5.05, during the balcony conversation (about not leaving a door open for Felicity's relationship with Oliver to rekindle). In the 5.20 flashback, after the ex-sex, when Felicity wasn't ready to talk yet.

And even after the will-they-or-won't-they tension was clearly resolved at the end of season 5, they STILL went back to Felicity saying "no" in season 6.

In 6.01, when Felicity says "not tonight, but soon." At that point, there's no question about Oliver and Felicity getting back together - the only sticking point is whether William is ready yet. It's Oliver's decision to make (and he eventually makes it). But the creators STILL gave Felicity the dialogue that delays the romantic reunion.

And finally, my last straw. The Nazi crossover, when Felicity (out of nowhere) says that she doesn't want to get married, setting up a primary conflict to be resolved at the end of the crossover with the double wedding.

Felicity starting by saying "no" (but eventually giving in) is the default conflict in the multi-year story of the Olicity relationship. It's like the writers can't think of any other way to create tension, even when Oliver is the one who has decided "no".

(Well, I guess that they did use love triangles occasionally. And I'm probably alone in this, but the love triangles don't bother me as much as the "no"s that turn to "yes"s.)

I know that Oliver has listened to Felicity at other times. But the most notable examples always seem to involve Felicity giving Oliver guidance about what to do next as a hero.

Come back to Starling City. Be the Arrow again. Don't kill Slade. DO kill Ra's al Ghul. Don't fight to die, fight to live. Come back to Star City and be the Green Arrow. Kill Damien Darhk. Recruit new members for the team. Stop trying to live for your father, live for yourself. (Oh, and be the Green Arrow. Again.)

When Felicity tells Oliver to do something, she's not talking about things that SHE wants. She's the voice of the writers, telling the audience what the Right Thing to Do is in this situation. She's being the moral compass.

And she only gets to be the moral compass because she's inherently good. And she shows that she's inherently good by saying "no" (unlike the villainesses, who are sluts).

This whole dynamic - good girls say no at first, but change their minds - is especially creepy when sexual harassment is going on behind the scenes. Because it's the cultural justification for ignoring what women actually want. And when it's added to the power dynamics (especially in season 2, when Oliver is Felicity's boss), it bothers me even more.

I believe that art can simply reflect its culture, but it can also magnify and sustain it. But art can also help people imagine ways in which the culture could be different.

If we're going to ever have a world where women are allowed to express their full creativity, to have true choices, then we have to imagine other options for conflicts in stories about relationships. Maybe will-they-or-won't-they is an appealing tension in a romance, but there are many options for creating conflicts and tension.

The stories don't always have to reinforce the cultural acceptance of sexual harassment.

So, what does Felicity deserve? She deserves to make her own choices, good and bad. She deserves to be involved in conflicts that arise from her character and motivation, rather than to be plugged into stories as the Good Girl Who Says No or the Moral Compass.

She deserves to say what she wants - whether it involves her company, or getting married, or having sex. Not to simply react to what Oliver (or other people) push her to do. Not to say "no" by default to create tension.

I wish there was a shred of hope that the Arrow writers would change. But I can't see any. Not with Guggenheim - who can't see the problems with any portrayal of female characters, and who responded to the allegations against Kreisberg by talking about "reverse sexism" - still in charge.

And after the past year and a half, with the election followed by the horror show of 2017 and the tsunami of sexual harassment revelations, I'm just too raw to get any kind of joy from a show that hangs onto its sexism.


	8. A Wedding Ring is a Poor Replacement for Agency

I don't have any hope for future stories for Felicity.

I realize that real women continue to exist as human beings after they get married. Children are challenging and hilarious and stressful. And marriages have conflict - especially if children arrive. And 40 to 50% of marriages end in divorce. And one could theoretically write hilarious stories about going to the grocery store, or ballet lessons, or daycare when you're a superhero. If the writers wanted to create a realistic woman after marriage, there might be interesting stories.

Does anyone really believe that the Arrow writers are going to create something like that?

Felicity has had at least three potential storylines that didn't amount to much. The paralysis turned out to be a set-up for Felicity to walk away from Oliver. The Helix story was a set-up for Felicity and Oliver to get back together, after Felicity experienced a little of the hypocrisy that Oliver lives. And Havenrock was addressed in the cracks and crannies around other stories, mostly through the character of Rory. But we rarely got to see Felicity dealing with the tragic decision to sacrifice one town to save a much larger city. We haven't seen Felicity deal with the emotional (or even strictly plot-related) ramifications of her decisions. Ever.

So. Two storylines that turned out to be set-ups for major turns in her relationship with Oliver. One storyline that was barely addressed. And that's while she was single and while her availability was in question. (I guess I should count the relationships with Ray and Billy as storylines, but they don't really feel like much. Ray was a creep. Billy was fridged. *Shrug*)

We live in a world in which women who are young and single are interesting, and women who are married are suddenly ignored. Until their kids are old enough to have stories of their own, and then the women can tragically die to propel their sons onward, or live to be blamed for their children's failings.

I can imagine a few possibilities for Felicity's future.

She could stay in the background of the bunker indefinitely, saying funny things and babbling about technology. She's been used like that a lot. Being married doesn't have to change that. Could happen.

She could get pregnant, and have reduced screen time, maybe as little as Thea gets right now. (They're not going to spend entire episodes showing Felicity puking, taking vitamins and worrying about getting gestational diabetes, sleeping poorly, having a sore back, going through false contractions, and wondering whether to get an epidural. They probably wouldn't even show an ultrasound. On a show like Arrow, she'll be lucky if she doesn't have some kind of exotic life-threatening complication.) If she has a baby, expect Felicity to disappear for most of the time. That's what mothers do, as far as most of the world is concerned.

She could not get pregnant, and still fade into the background, except to be put in grave danger from time to time.

She could be written like a shrew and a problem for Oliver. Lots of wives get written that way.

But if they can't even keep a coherent set of motivations while she's a love interest, they're not going to treat her like a human being while she's a wife.

If she didn't have agency before she got married, it's not going to happen.

So. Enjoy what you asked for, romance fans. It's unlikely to improve. Ever.


	9. Mothers

Being a mother is complicated and messy and exhausting. Yes, kids are adorable. They are also stressful, whether they are babies who don't sleep, third-graders who forget their jackets and get in trouble for not listening, or teenagers who glare and grumble about the unfairness of it all.

But for Arrow, motherhood is limited to a few characteristics.

 **Motherhood ennobles women.**  And for some women, it is their only redemption.

Moira Queen was practically a villain. But she did it all for the love of her children. Motherhood was her motivation, and therefore she was not totally evil.

Lyla Michaels lacks the heartless determination of Amanda Waller, despite replacing her. Because Lyla is a mother.

 **Motherhood involves sacrifice.** Literally. Mothers die on Arrow. Moira died so both her children could live. Laura Ramirez died in a tragic gun screw-up by her husband, leading to Wild Dog's origin story. Samantha Clayton died while running irrationally towards a fire, frantically looking for her son, so Oliver could have a fatherhood story.

 **Mothers are irrational, especially regarding fathers.** Donna Smoak kicked out Felicity's father and then lied to Felicity about it. Samantha Clayton allowed Oliver to spend time with William, but only if Oliver didn't tell anyone what he was doing, and only if William didn't know that Oliver was his father.

Actually, I want to talk more about Samantha. Because Samantha deserved a story that made sense, not the random nonsense that she was shoved into.

So Samantha left Star City (where presumably she was working or was a college student or something), pregnant, after Moira offered her money to lie about having a miscarriage. And then she was a single mother for ten years. Presumably her family had money or something, and supported her - otherwise, being a single mom at the beginning of a career would make it difficult to manage both financially and at work, especially if she didn't cash Moira's checks. (Day care is expensive; for someone who is starting out, it can eat an entire salary. And managing a baby and school is hard - even with a co-parent. Alone? Super rough.)

Even if the money situation was ok, parenting alone is damn hard. You're the only one who can handle the middle-of-the-night feedings, the only one who can deal with the sick kid when he can't go to daycare, the only one to go to meetings with teachers (always during the work day). You shop, you cook, you clean, you dry tears, you help with homework. You go to bed exhausted and get up to manage things again the next day.

And then when William is ten, Oliver suddenly reappears and demands to be part of William's life again?

Of course Samantha's immediate answer was no.

She should never have agreed to let Oliver visit William at all. She should have forced him to go through a court battle. Which would have meant that Oliver would have had to admit to having a secret child, while he was running for mayor. It would have been a scandal. (Well, two years ago it would have been a scandal.) And whether Oliver told anyone or not... irrelevant. It would only hurt Oliver more if he told his history to people like Felicity.

Here's how the story could have gone - should have gone.

Samantha sends Oliver away and tells him to stay away from her and William.

Oliver decides to sneak to Central City and try to see William anyway.

Samantha wants to get a restraining order against Oliver, and hires a private investigator or something to dig up dirt about him.

Felicity notices that someone is digging up dirt about Oliver, and asks him whether she should deal with the problem. Oliver says yes, deal with it, so Felicity does some cyber thing to Samantha, like messes with her credit or bank accounts or somehow subverts the attempt to get a restraining order.

Damien Darhk kidnaps William. Samantha thinks that Oliver did it, and shows up in Star City. Super pissed off.

And then Felicity finds out that the cyber-nastiness that Oliver asked her to do was threatening the single mother of his ten-year-old kid. And boy, does that make Felicity mad.

After rescuing William, Felicity walks out. Not because Oliver had a secret kid, but because of the way he treated Samantha. (Felicity is sympathetic to Samantha, given that Felicity was raised by a single mother, too.)

After staging a fake wedding to catch Cupid, Felicity tells Oliver that she can't trust him, given his behavior with Samantha. How could she marry someone, maybe have kids with him, if he might be like that in ten years?

And then season 5 could happen as it did, but with Oliver needing to ultimately prove that he listens to and respects women in his life. Not just Felicity, but Thea or Lyla or Dinah or Susan or whoever else is around. Any woman. All women. Not just the woman that he wants to marry. (Don't trust men who seem good, but only for you. They need to be good people to everyone.)

And Oliver and Felicity only get back together after Oliver starts dealing with women like human beings with their own needs and wants and dreams.

(But in canonical season 6, that doesn't happen, despite what Oliver learned in season 5. Because the Arrow writers don't even acknowledge that women are human beings who have their own wants and needs. And because Oliver still can't be a good human being without the intervention of Felicity. And because of Nazis, because Nazis make everything suck.)

(Also, Samantha should never have forgiven Oliver for uprooting her and William and making them live under new identities, only to be kidnapped again. Oliver, you are an unreconstructed asshole.)


	10. Mea Culpa for the Telling Awful Stories

One personal note. After this, I'll move my rants from Brevity 2 here, add the season 6 drabbles to the season 5 drabbles, and finish orphaning everything.

*

Years ago, a friend of mine was in a hotel room with her boss.

He wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

She reported the incident through the official channels. Nothing was done.

She asked a professional organization of women in our field for help. They wouldn't do anything.

Eventually, he assaulted other women, and finally he lost that job.

But my friend doesn't work in our field any more. At all.

*

I wrote a fic in which Oliver and Felicity ended up in a hotel room with only one bed. I intended to follow through on the usual sexy trope. But I just couldn't write it, and Oliver ended up sleeping on the floor.

It was only later that I realized that the trope makes a fantasy of my friend's sexual assault experience.

I keep thinking of the women who wouldn't help her. Who assumed that she wanted it. Who thought she was lying, or that she just regretted the experience later.

What role do our fantasies play in undermining the search for justice, for my friend and for many other people who have been groped, coerced into sex, or threatened by men with power over them?

So many of the first-time romance tropes deal with a fear of making a decision, and make it seem sexy to be in a situation where there is no choice. You have to share a bed. You have to pretend to be in a relationship, and then you have to kiss in order to fool the bad guys. You need to have a fake wedding ceremony. You suddenly find yourself taking care of a child with the man you are secretly in love with. You are forced into an arranged marriage with a hot, dangerous guy. (And then there are the alpha-omega stories, and the soulmate stories, and the sex pollen stories, and the fuck-or-die stories...)

I want stories involving consent. Active, enthusiastic, joyously sexy consent.

That's not what I have created.

I wrote a story that nearly involved a fake relationship, and nearly involved bed-sharing.

I wrote another story that, in an early draft, included Oliver playing bodyguard to Felicity, although she didn't want him to.

I wrote another story in which a sentient coffeemaker was a jealous bitch who wanted to steal Oliver from Felicity.

None of these stories are ok. These are stories that encourage us to expect relationships to be a particular way - to have women who are jealous of one another, or men who disregard the wishes of their girlfriends, or situations that flirt with nonconsensuality.

I regret writing those fics.

I regret writing all of my Arrow fics.

I am working on orphaning them, rather than deleting them, because another friend once told me that stories should be shared. (And the stories aren't especially worse than the show. Which isn't saying much.)

But I am part of the problem.

I am going away. I want to stop being part of the problem.

Don't expect stories from me. I'm walking away from the CW and DC Comics and anything created by Berlanti. I'm hesitant to watch any shows on TV. The only movie that I want to see in the next year is _A Wrinkle in Time_ ; I figure that I can trust Ava DuVernay, at least, out of all the people in Hollywood.

Hopefully, someday there will be more stories that I enjoy. Stories that aren't horrifying.

But they don't exist right now.


	11. Too Superficial for a Role Reversal (6.04 commentary)

Cayden James is over-the-top.

Oliver is over-protective, and we're supposed to think this is good boyfriend behavior.

Alena has no personality.

BS exists.

There is no real emotional oomph behind Felicity's decision about what to do with her company.

I hated it. Give Felicity a REAL story, damn it. Not this emotionally empty cheesy crap.

Ugh.

(Edit after sleeping: "Oliver and Felicity switch roles for a day" is a cute idea for a fanfic, but it was poorly executed. And it laid an emotionally shallow foundation for what appear to be a couple major plots - Cayden James' Evil Plan, and Felicity's business. It's like all the things I hate about the idea of "endgame" - it's basically a set of gifs designed to make the fandom squee, without any real complex character motivations or plots that make sense or anything that makes a story GOOD.)

(Edit 2: So I wanted the Helix story so badly that I watched the episode again. I stand by my disappointment; I think that the role reversal was a gimicky plot used in place of a truly character-driven story. Also, the Internet Vault is even more absurd than the earthquake machine in season 1. Cayden James might be interesting if he didn't constantly interact with that atrociousness that is KC's acting. I wish Felicity's business had been the climax of an interesting story and soul-searching, rather than the set-up for the next bit of plot. And I can't stand over-protective Oliver, but at least Felicity yelled at him, and he apologized and tried to do better.

I'm not going to watch the show live any more, though, because I need to fast-forward through any appearance by BS. She ruins the entire show for me, which sucks, but my emotions are what they are.

Also, the shipper lady in the restaurant is annoying.)


	12. Ugh, Really? (6.08? Crossover)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should be my last commentary on any Arrow episodes. I watched the Nazi crossover after Kreisberg was fired. It confirmed my decision to walk away from the show.

I did actually watch the crossover. (I told myself that I would give the shows - at least Legends and Arrow - another chance if Kreisberg was fired. I realize that he has had less interaction (recently) with Legends and Arrow than with Supergirl and Flash. But I've already stopped watching Supergirl and Flash because I wasn't enjoying them. My message was for the WB/CW/DC higher-ups, really. Not that one viewer makes a difference, I know. It's just the principle of the thing.)

The good:

\- Felicity and Iris were NOT damsels in distress. Yay. (I was really worried about that.) And they worked together to rescue Kara, and then Kara rescued them back.

\- Snart and the Ray. Though I'm still thinking about the gender/sexuality issues involved with the softer-and-kinder Snart also being the (openly) gay version of Snart. If he's more heroic because he was able to live his sexuality, then yay. But if there's this gender-and-sexuality essentialism, with a gay version of a character taking on more stereotypically feminine characteristics (like being soft and kind)... hmmm.

\- I liked Killer Frost, and I liked the Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde quality to Caitlin/Frost. I stopped watching The Flash regularly before Killer Frost appeared, so I wasn't familiar with her.

The bad:

\- Nazis.

\- Seriously. Nazis? WTF, Arrowverse. WTF.

\- Nazis killed the Jewish man.

\- And Nazi!Oliver was as loyal and deeply in love as our Oliver. Which, ok, fine. Yes, Nazis were (and are) human. See Hannah Arendt's writing for a starting point, as a caution about how normal people can be monsters (and we really should have paid attention to that 30 years ago, when there were hints that it really could happen here). But...

\- Are we supposed to conclude that Nazi!Oliver was evil because he was in love with Evil Kara (who was a caricature, BTW), while our Oliver turned good because he was in love with Felicity (the good and pure and light)? Because I took that message away from the wedding at the end, when Oliver repeated that one part of his season 4 vows. And I'm super uncomfortable with putting the entire burden of a man's moral development on his female partner.

\- And yes, I went into the show with a fear that Oliver's moral development would be attributed to Felicity's goodness, so maybe I was hypersensitive.

\- And I find it problematic to put the moral responsibility on the woman, because (1) it's an unfair burden and (2) it encourages girls to think that their innate goodness could cause an abusive or lying or [insert other bad quality here] man to change - I think we endanger girls by telling them these kinds of stories. We should find ways to help women get free of those situations, and support the women afterwards, and tell those stories.

\- On a different note, the writers have completely failed to give Felicity a consistent motivation for her feelings about relationships (going back to early season 3, even). And that gives her a  _la donna e mobile_  (woman is fickle) quality, despite EBR's acting. Creating a previously unexpressed motivation just for the crossover, and then having Felicity change her mind, reinforces the common belief that women are emotionally flaky and you really don't need to listen to them. (I realize that the episode was written by a sexual harasser and a non-repentant mansplainer, so not surprising.)

\- And I would probably have a lot of criticism about Kara's and Alex's relationship stories if I were still watching Supergirl. But I'm not.

\- In summary: nope. Not a fan.

The ugly:

\- I am skeptical that getting rid of Kreisberg will fix the problems that I see with Arrow, and I fear that the environment for the women on the creative team won't change. Because it's the power imbalances, not the sex, that makes sexual harassment a problem.

\- And I worry that criticisms of the treatment of women in general on the shows won't get any attention, because those criticisms get drowned out by "yay, Oliver and Felicity got married!" versus "Oliver isn't supposed to marry  _Felicity_!" (It's not about treatment of Felicity versus Laurel; it's about the writing for both characters, plus Thea and Moira and Isabel Rochev and Samantha and Ruve Adams and Shado and Susan Williams and Nyssa and Sara and all the nameless female bodies from season 1 and... and... and...)


End file.
